The excessive and indiscriminate use of various types of natural resources is spoiling our healthy environment day by day. We can save our environment by practising three R’s : Reduce, Recycle and Reuse. This is explained below.

1. Reduce:

Reduce means that we use less of the natural resources by cutting down on those practices which I lead to their wastage. For example, we can reduce the wastage of electricity by switching off unnecessary lights and fans. Saving electricity means that we are reducing the use of coal (because coal is used to produce electricity). We can reduce the wastage of water by repairing the leaking taps. We can reduce the use of LPG by making use of solar cooker for cooking food. We can reduce the use of petrol by walking or cycling for short distances. And we can reduce the use of water resources and fertilisers by preventing the lot of water and fertilisers are utilised for the production of food).

2. Recycling

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Recycling means that we should collect the used and discarded items of paper, plastic, glass and metals, and send them to the respective industries for making fresh paper, plastic, glass or metal objects.

In order to recycle materials, we should first segregate (separate) our domestic wastes properly so that the materials which can be recycled do not get dumped along with other household wastes which are to be thrown away.

Reuse means that, if possible, we should use the same things again. For example, the plastic jars in which we buy various food items like jams and pickles, etc., can be used later on for storing things like salt, spices, sugar, tea-leaves and pulses, etc. And paper envelopes can be reversed inside out and used again. The process of ‘reuse’ is better than that of ‘recycling’ because some energy is used to recycle old objects but no energy is required during reuse. The items which can be reused are, however, very limited.